Azerbaijan: Fresh Charges Brought against Detained Bloggers

Azerbaijani prosecutors have charged detained youth activists and video bloggers Emin Milli and Adnan Hajizade with causing "mild injury" to an unspecified victim, the pair's defense attorney told an August 24 news conference in Baku. The two young men were originally charged with hooliganism in what has become a cause célèbre for free speech rights in the South Caucasus.

"Nobody has seen the 'victim,' much less their bodily injuries so far," defense attorney Gajizade Ashurov was quoted by Kavkazsky Uzel news service as saying. He claimed that the court case increasingly borders on farcical. [For background see the Eurasia Insight archive].

Milli and Hajizade were arrested in July for allegedly starting a brawl in a Baku café. The two, however, say that they were the victims of an unprovoked attack by two strangers. The alleged instigators of the café attack against the bloggers are not in custody and have not been charged with any crime. In early August, a Baku court rejected a motion filed by lawyers for the bloggers to win their release. The pair's trial is tentatively slated to open in early September.

Human rights groups claim that the attack and subsequent arrest came as retribution for Milli and Hajizade's criticism of the authorities. The day before the café incident, Milli, a fluent German speaker, appeared on the German television channel ZDF and gave a scathing assessment of Azerbaijan's democratization process.

In recent weeks, Baku has come under growing international and domestic pressure to free the activists. In mid-August, for example, Germany's human rights commissioner, Guenter Nooke, issued a statement that described Azerbaijan's human rights climate as "not satisfactory," and went on to call for Milli and Hajizade's immediate release.

"This case must not be allowed to be swept under the carpet," Nooke's statement said.

In early August, a third youth activist, Agasif Shakiroglu, the head of the youth coalition Hadaf, was taken into custody on a draft-dodging charge. [For background see the Eurasia Insight archive]. Azerbaijani officials have so far remained impervious to international criticism.